Biography and CV

Biography

Fiona Amundsen’s practice focuses on paradigmatic socio-cultural histories and narratives associated with how the Asia Pacific Theatre (WWII) is officially memorialized across parts of Asia and the Pacific. She’s interested in what is left out of official narratives and memorialization, and has explored this by bringing together declassified archival imagery with her own present-day photographing/filming, as well as witness testimonies that expand how imaging is comprehended, both as feeling and signification. Her impulse to work with this very specific history connects to the question of who gets the right to remember, along with what it means to remember ethically, and what this might look like. This raises questions concerning how to become present to this history, to what it holds, to what it can teach of the ways the residues of historical acts hide within the present.

Her recent projects have focused on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park (The First City in History) 2010, the 1941 Japanese initiated Pearl Harbour attack (Operation Magic) 2013, Yasukuni Shrine and the ancestry based plight of Japanese American Ben Kuroki (Imperial Body) 2014, the American initiated Battle of Okinawa (Violent Wind of Steel) 2014, the Japanese occupation of Singapore and its relationship to the Indian National Army (Imperial Double Take) 2015, and the firebombing of Tokyo and America’s steel manufacturing industries Like a Body Without Skin (2015/16). She has recently published a book, also titled The Imperial Body, with Split/Fountain.

Education:Master of Social Sciences (first class honours), University of Waikato, 2005
Bachelor of Social Science with Honours in Anthropology (first class), University of Waikato, 2003
Bachelor of Arts (in Social Anthropology), University of Auckland 1996